Falling in Time
by 4EverFallen
Summary: Aurelia didn't choose to travel with the Doctor, or to skip around his timeline, but no matter where she ends up he will always be there. Sometimes it just takes a little while. Doctor/OC. EDIT (3-20-18): Prologue has been replaced with new chapter. Next chapter will be updated soon. Sorry for the wait.
1. Chapter 1: The Vanishing Act

EDIT (3-20-18): **New readers can ignore this.** It's been so long, I'm not sure I have any old readers, but just in case, I wanted to let people know I'm sorry for being so terrible with updates. Basically, I'm sorry for not updating at all in . . . a year? Again. I didn't want that to happen but it couldn't be helped. As of about six months ago, most of my free time has been spent watching my nephew when my parents are at work, and I really do have to watch him, otherwise he gets into EVERYTHING, and the rest of my free time, what little I actually have now, is spent trying to sleep or just trying to relax because trying to keep up with him is _exhausting_. It can be very stressful, too, for _reasons_ (I really don't want to get into it). But now that he's starting to settle down a bit, I'm finding more time to myself. I plan to use some of that time to write but I won't make any more promises. I don't want to jinx myself. Anyway, since I've had more time, I came back to Riley's story and decided to make a few changes to the prologue, which is now just the first chapter: I added scene's from Amelia's perspective and made some minor changes to Riley's backstory. I'm going to update the next chapter with a few changes soon and after that I hope to finally put up a new chapter.

 **New readers!** I know this isn't an original idea, but I hope you enjoy the story anyway. Also, I apologize if you're hoping for weekly updates, but with everything that's going on in my life right now I'm probably going to be restricted to monthly updates. It depends. I _might_ be able to update twice a month but as mentioned above I'm not going to make any promises.

Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who, just my OC, Aurelia Clarke, and all the people she knows from "our world."

* * *

Chapter 1:  
 _The Vanishing Act_

Leadworth was a small town, quiet, peaceful, _dull_. It wasn't the sort of place one would expect anything interesting to happen, at least it hadn't seemed that way to Amelia Pond when she first moved into her new house with her parents, but now . . . things were different now. As she lowered herself to her knees, she kept a wary eye on the main source of her problems, a crack in her bedroom wall, then she shut both her eyes tight, knowing she had to do this right or it wouldn't work, and clasped her hands on the bed in front of her and began to pray:

"Dear Santa, thank you for the dolls and the pencils and the fish. It's Easter now, so I hope I didn't wake you. But honest, it _is_ an emergency. There's a crack in my wall."

Here she paused, allowing herself another glance at the crack, but a sudden, horrible feeling of dread prompted her to shut her eyes a few seconds later and continue.

"Aunt Sharon says it's just an ordinary crack, but . . . I know it's not, because, at night, there's voices. So please, _please_ , could you send someone to fix it? Or a policeman? Or . . ."

She was trying to think of anyone else who could possibly help her when a strange warping noise filled the air. It sounded like it was coming from outside. "Back in a moment," she added as she heard a crash and the sound of glass breaking, then she ran to the window, pulling back the curtain to investigate. Her eyes went wide as she saw a big blue box in the garden. The words 'police box' were in big white letters above a set of doors. Smoke was rising from the doors and the remains of the shed were scattered all around it, but she didn't care. It seemed to her that her prayers had been answered. Smiling, she looked up at the sky.

"Thank you, Santa," she whispered.

Her smile vanished as soon as she turned around. There was another crack. It was a bit smaller than the one on her bedroom wall but this one was hovering in midair and it hadn't been there when she started praying. Terrified, hoping whoever had come really was there to help, she edged her way around it and fled from the room, barely remembering to grab a jacket and pull on some boots before running outside. She went back a moment later to grab a torch. She reached the garden just as the doors flew open and a grappling hook was thrown out. It latched onto a lawn mower. A moment later she watched as first one hand, then another, and the head of a man drenched in water popped over the edge. It took him a moment, the light of the torch shining right on his face temporarily blinding him, but he smiled when he noticed her.

"Can I have an apple?" he said. "All I can think about – apples. Maybe I'm having a craving. That's new," he added, peering down as if speaking to someone, "never had a craving before."

He frowned then, pulling himself out and shifting to sit on the edge of the box, facing her, and it seemed to her that he was sulking. He also seemed like he might be hurt: his clothes were wet and ragged and appeared to be torn in places.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

The man smiled again, waving off her concern. "Just had a fall. All the way down there, right to the library. Hell of a climb back up."

Amelia frowned. "You're soaking wet."

The man nodded. "I was in the swimming pool."

She narrowed her eyes. "You said you were in the library."

"So was the swimming pool."

Amelia took a moment to try to wrap her head around this, failed, and glanced down at the box again. "Is there someone else in there?"

"Not anymore." The man was sulking again.

"Are you a policeman?"

"Why?" the man said sharply, eyeing her with concern. "Did you call a policeman?"

"Did you come about the crack in my wall?" she asked hopefully.

"What cra – _agh_!" The man suddenly fell to the ground, twitching violently.

"Are you all right, mister?" Amelia asked, watching him in concern.

The man was on his knees, trying to stand. "No, I'm fine, it's okay," he assured her. "This is all perfectly norm -" He broke off as wisps of golden light came out of his mouth.

Amelia could only stare. "Who are you?"

"I don't know yet," the man told her, staring down at his hands as more gold light flowed out of them, "I'm still cooking. Does it scare you?"

"No, it just looks a bit weird." Amelia had seen far scarier things besides – the cracks, for instance, especially the new one that came out of nowhere.

"No, no, no, the crack in your wall," the man corrected. "Does it scare you?"

"Yes," she admitted. "So does the other one."

The man leapt to his feet. "Well, then, no time to lose. I'm the Doctor. Do everything I tell you, don't ask stupid questions, and don't wander off."

He promptly walked into a tree, knocking him to the ground.

"You all right?" Amelia asked, shining the torch in his face again.

"Early days," the Doctor said, squinting at her. "Steering's a bit off."

He didn't seem to be very coordinated, but somehow he managed to get in the house on his own two feet and he only hit his head once more on the frame of the kitchen door. He just stood there, looking a bit awkward, water pooling at his feet as she went to get him an apple.

"If you're a doctor, why does your box say 'police'?" she asked, after she found one and handed it to him. He didn't answer, watching her as he took a bite, started to chew, and spat it out, coughing and sputtering. She made a face, backing away to avoid the spray.

"That's disgusting," he declared. " _What_ is that?"

"An apple."

"Apples are rubbish. I hate apples."

Amelia narrowed her eyes accusingly. "You said you loved them."

"No, no, I love yogurt," the Doctor insisted. "Yogurt's my favorite. Give me yogurt."

So she got him some yogurt, but he spat that out, too.

"I hate yogurt," he said, wiping his mouth, "it's just stuff with bits in it."

"You said it was your favorite."

"New mouth, new rules," the Doctor told her. "It's like eating after cleaning your teeth, everything tastes wro – _agh_!" He started twitching again and slapped himself on the forehead.

"What is it? What's wrong with you?"

"Wrong with me?" The Doctor looked offended. "It's not my fault. Why can't you give me decent food? You're Scottish – fry something."

She did, but first she went to get the Doctor a towel. He used it to dry his hair as she fried up some bacon, then let it hang around his neck as he tried the bacon and various other foods, none of which he seemed to like after he tasted them but which he initially seemed to approve of: He accused her of trying to poison him when he tried the bacon, spat a mouthful of beans into the sink, and he found the bread and butter so offensive he actually took the whole plate and threw it outside, apparently hitting a cat. Soon he was left to pace as she looked in the fridge for more food, the towel left abandoned on the floor, but so far nothing seemed to be good enough.

"We've got some carrots," she suggested finally.

"Carrots?" The Doctor shot her an incredulous look. "Are you insane? No, wait, hang on. I know what I need. I need . . . I need . . . I need . . ." He poked his head around in the fridge and freezer until he pulled out two things. "Fish fingers and custard."

And so they found themselves sitting across from each other at the table, him with a plate of fish fingers and a bowl of custard, her with a tub of ice cream. The Doctor had been dipping the fish fingers in the custard, but suddenly he just took the bowl and drank it all up, leaving behind a mustache that he wiped away with his hand.

"Funny," Amelia remarked.

"Am I? Good. Funny's good. What's your name?"

"Amelia Pond."

"Ah, that's a brilliant name," the Doctor said. "Amelia Pond, like a name in a fairy tale. Are we in Scotland, Amelia?"

"No. We had to move to England. It's rubbish." She'd only seen Leadworth, of course, but childishly she reasoned that the rest of the country couldn't be any better.

"So what about your mum and dad, then?" the Doctor said, glancing up at the ceiling. "Are they upstairs? Thought we'd have woken them by now."

"I don't have a mum and dad. Just an aunt." Amelia had been on her own for years before Aunt Sharon came to look after her. She had no memory of her parents.

"I don't even have an aunt."

"You're lucky." Aunt Sharon liked to go out a lot but when she was around she could be very bossy and had little patience to answer questions or to play with her. She sometimes wished she didn't have an aunt, then she remembered she didn't have anyone else.

The Doctor picked up another fish finger. "I know. So, your aunt. Where is she?"

"She's out."

"And she left you all alone?"

Amelia didn't like his tone. "I'm not _scared_!" Not of being alone, at least.

"'Course you're not," the Doctor agreed, dropping the fish finger and shoving his plate aside. "You're not scared of anything! Box falls out of the sky, man falls out of box, man eats fish custard, and look at you, just sitting there. So you know what I think?"

Amelia leaned forward. "What?"

The Doctor leaned forward as well. "Those cracks in your wall must be scary as hell."

She tried to stall, but the Doctor insisted, so they abandoned their food and Amelia led him upstairs to her room. She lingered in the doorway as he walked forward to examine the new crack, reaching out as if to touch it, though he was still a few feet away when it began to stretch and the gap widened, enough for a shadow to fall though. Biting back a scream, Amelia jumped back, and then to her shock the crack snapped shut and disappeared, leaving behind nothing but empty air, as if it had never been there. Empty air and the shadow.

Amelia backed herself into the hall, stopping only when she hit the railing, but the Doctor stayed in the room, watching the shadow closely as it began to move.

"Aurelia?" he said finally. "Aurelia! Are you okay? You're not hurt, are you?"

When the Doctor threw his arms around it, Amelia realized it wasn't a shadow:

It was a girl.

* * *

 _Earlier, our universe, somewhere in London . . ._

One of the first things Aurelia Clarke planned to do the day after she arrived in London was be a tourist. She still wasn't sure whether she would stay in the area or not so it might have been her only chance to see the sights. Her hotel wasn't exactly the nicest London had to offer, but it wasn't filthy or crawling with cockroaches like the last hotel she'd spent the night in and that was all that mattered to her. She was just leaving, fighting with her scarf to get it to stay loose around her neck without threatening to fall right off, because she knew she would need it but she didn't like to wear it, when suddenly her plans changed and all because of a crack in a wall.

It looked just like the cracks in time from _Doctor Who_ , tendrils of eerie white light slithering out of it as it opened wide like a mouth, attracting a small crowd. Thinking it must be some silly stunt, but curious despite herself, Riley went to join the crowd, standing next to a random stranger who was recording the whole thing on his phone.

"What is it?" she asked. "What's going on?"

"I don't know," the man told her, "it just appeared . . . out of _nowhere_. It was like magic!"

 _Yeah right,_ she thought, repressing a scoff, but then she felt something on her leg, an odd tingling sensation, and when she looked down, one of the tendrils was wrapping around it. As she watched, frowning, another one wrapped around her other leg. She tried to move away, but it was no use: the light continued to wrap itself around her legs and latched onto her arms. The more she tried to pull away, the closer to the crack she seemed to get to the gaping hole in the wall. "Let me go!" she demanded. "Let me go right now!"

People were muttering to each other behind her, but they sounded more excited than worried, clearly thinking it was all part of the show.

 _It's not!_ Riley wanted to say, but it was too late: She felt a sharp tug behind her navel, then she was blinded by the light as she fell into the crack. A moment later she landed hard on something solid. It took her a moment to get her bearings. When she did, she noticed she was in what looked like a child's bedroom – there were a few stuffed animals laying around and there were crayon drawings on a desk nearby, not to mention a little ginger-haired girl standing just outside the room, half hidden by the strange man standing there in wet clothes, a strange but familiar-looking man with floppy brown hair and a rather prominent chin.

Riley did a double-take as she started to look away from the pair. For a moment she could only stare at them like they were staring at her – they looked almost exactly like Amelia Pond and the Eleventh Doctor, very subtle differences setting them apart from the actors who had portrayed them in the show – but as the pair began to recover from her sudden appearance, it occurred to her that she must be dreaming.

She had only dreamed about waking up that morning, but really she was still sleeping on a slightly lumpy mattress in that room she'd been renting. Why she was dreaming about this Doctor, especially this early in his timeline, she could only guess since the last she'd seen on TV, the Doctor's most recent companion, Clara Oswald, had just seen him regenerate and the Twelfth Doctor, who was much older than the past three, hated the color of his kidneys and seemed to have forgotten how to fly the TARDIS. Still, people didn't just go falling into fictional worlds, and they certainly weren't dragged into them against their will.

Yes, Riley nodded to herself. She had to be dreaming. It was the only logical explanation.

"Aurelia?" And now she had her arms full of Doctor, who apparently knew her. Great. "Aurelia! Are you okay? You're not hurt, are you?"

"I'm fine," she said, awkwardly patting him on the back. Dream or not, she wasn't really comfortable with the sudden invasion of her personal space.

He pulled away. "What was that? Where did it come from?"

Riley shrugged, tugging off her scarf as she got to her feet and put a bit of distance between them, making him frown. "I don't know," she told him. "I was in this hotel, in London, and there was a crack in the wall and this light came out and dragged me through it."

The Doctor looked alarmed. So did Amelia, who now stood only a few feet away.

"Is that what's going to happen to me?" the little girl asked, paling as she looked at something behind Riley, drawing the brunette's attention for the first time to the crack that spanned the length of the bedroom wall. Unlike the one at the hotel, this one was still shut.

"No," Riley answered when the Doctor hesitated.

"How do you know?" Amelia demanded, clearly frightened.

"Because I just know things," Riley told her. She looked back at the Doctor, who was watching her carefully, and frowned. "Now why don't you stop worrying about me and prove it."

The Doctor looked torn, but only for a moment, then he looked down at Amelia, seeing how scared she was, and he nodded, jumping to his feet.

"Right," he said. "Where was I?"

He held out the battered-looking sonic screwdriver in his hand, pointing it at the crack, and a loud buzzing noise filled the room. Amelia darted forward to hold his hand as it opened wide and a robotic voice informed them that Prisoner Zero had escaped.

 _"Prisoner Zero has escaped,"_ the voice repeated.

The Doctor took a hesitant step forward.

"Hello?" he called. "Hello?"

At first, all they could see was a row of prison cells, then a giant blue eye appeared, blocking them from view, and looked around at them.

Amelia gasped. "What's that?"

"That's Prisoner Zero's guard," Riley informed her. At that same moment, a ball of light shot out of the crack, striking him in the chest and knocking him to the ground, then the crack snapped shut, not even leaving a trace behind as it vanished.

"There," the Doctor said as he got to his feet. "You see, it's shut. Good as new. And Riley was right – you're fine."

"By the way," Riley said, "Prisoner Zero has escaped. That's what the message says."

"But why tell us?" The Doctor frowned. "Unless . . ."

"Unless what?" Amelia asked, looking between them.

"Unless Prisoner Zero escaped through here," he said. He looked at Riley. "But he can't have. We'd know."

"Check the hall," she told him. Not wanting to miss anything, she didn't hesitate to follow when the Doctor ran out. Neither did Amelia.

At once, Riley started searching for the extra door she knew was at the other end of the hall, looking out the corner of her eye. It only took her a few seconds. The Doctor, on the other hand . . .

"It's difficult," he was saying as he looked around. "Brand-new me, nothing works yet. But there's something I'm missing . . . in the corner . . . of my eye."

His eyes were at the other end of the hall, almost where the extra door was, when the sound of a bell echoed through the house. He sprinted and ran downstairs.

"No, no, no, no, no, no!"

"Come on!" Riley said, and she and Amelia ran after him, the scarf falling to the floor.

"I've got to get back in there!" the Doctor said once they were all outside, running into the garden. "The engines are phasing, it's going to burn!"

"But . . . it's just a box!" Amelia protested. "How can a box have engines?"

The Doctor freed the grappling hook from the lawn mower and started gathering up the rope.

"It's not a box," he said distractedly. "It's a time machine."

Amelia stared at him in disbelief. "What, a real one? You've got a real time machine?"

"Not for much longer if Riley and I can't get her stabilized," the Doctor told her, and Riley, who had been looking at the TARDIS, stared at him, surprised at being included, while he looped the rope around the door handles. "Five minute hop into the future should do it."

"Can I come?" Amelia asked hopefully.

"Not safe in here," the Doctor said, not sparing her a glance as he worked. "Not yet. Five minutes. Give us five minutes, we'll be right back." He hopped onto the edge of the box and held out a hand expectantly. "Riley."

The brunette slowly approached the box and allowed him to pull her up.

"Hold onto me," the Doctor instructed.

Riley hesitantly put her arms around him, not comfortable being so close to him since she'd only just met him, no matter that she was convinced she was dreaming and that she'd been watching his adventures on TV for years. To distract herself, she glanced down into the TARDIS, eyes widening as she saw the old console room with the coral beams and the gold grating on the floors. The console itself was starting to smoke and beyond the open doors behind it was a wide corridor that stretched and twisted out of sight.

On the ground, Amelia's face fell.

"People always say that," she said glumly.

The Doctor pulled away from Riley and jumped down to talk to her.

"Am I people?" he asked. "Do I even look like people? Trust me, I'm the Doctor."

As Riley turned to look at them, Amelia managed a small smile, then the Doctor jumped back up next to the brunette, pulling her to him. Once her arms were around him again, he got a good grip on the rope and jumped, although not before giving Amelia one last glance.

"Geronimo!"

* * *

 _Shortly after . . ._

Amelia dashed inside and up the stairs to her bedroom, unknowingly running right past the extra door, and grabbed a suitcase to put everything she thought she might need inside. She liked the strange, raggedy man who helped get rid of the crack, and that girl, who the Doctor seemed to know, had seemed nice enough, and although she didn't know either of them very well – or at all, really – they had a _time machine_. They could take her on all sorts of adventures and bring her back before Aunt Sharon noticed she was missing or, better yet, they could take her away forever and she'd never have to see boring old Leadworth again!

So excited was she, Amelia couldn't seem to pack her things fast enough, but soon she was ready. She went running back outside, pausing only once in the hall to pick up the scarf Riley had dropped, intending to give it back to the girl when she and the Doctor returned, but she still couldn't see the extra door and didn't notice as she passed it again that it was wide open.

As she waited outside, scanning the stars for a sign of the box, she didn't notice a shadow pass over a window in the house behind her.

* * *

A/N: So, there it is. Let me know what you think in a review.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Yeah, I know it's been, what, over a month? I wanted to get this up sooner, but I didn't have a lot of free time the past couple of weeks. I still don't have a lot of free time, but I wanted to get this up before New Year's. Hope you enjoy - oh, and thanks for the reviews!

Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who, just Riley and any other characters you don't recognize.

* * *

Chapter 1:  
 _The Eleventh Hour_

Riley wasn't enjoying how realistic her dream was when she and the Doctor emerged from the TARDIS a few minutes later, coughing as they held cloths to their mouths to prevent any more smoke filling their lungs. Although she had tried to warn the Doctor while he was racing around the console, telling her what to do, it seemed her dream was determined to keep things on track because it was daytime now and there was a shed standing nearby. Unless of course the time-traveling alien was just _that_ bad at flying the box, which was as equally as possible, but she didn't have much time to think about it as the Doctor took her by the hand and dragged her up to the back door, shouting for Amelia.

"I worked out what it was!" he was saying. "I know what I was missing! You've got to get out of there!"

He tried to open the door, but it was locked now, so he took out his sonic screwdriver, which looked like it was about to fall apart, and smacked it a few times to get it to work as he pointed it at the door. As he did this, he looked around, seeming confused by the change in surroundings, but just as he looked like he was about to say something about it, the door unlocked and he raced inside.

"Amelia!" he called, running upstairs. "Amelia, are you all right? Are you there?"

Riley debated with herself for a moment whether or not she should warn him about Amy, then started running after him before she could stop herself. "Doctor, wait!"

"Prisoner Zero is here!" she heard him shouting. "Prisoner Zero is here! Prisoner Zero is here! Do you understand me? Prisoner Zero is -"

"Duck!" Riley shouted as she reached the top of the stairs, but it was too late, the tall young woman in a police uniform whacked him with her cricket bat, knocking him to the ground – she winced as his head hit the wall on the way down – and then, before she could run, the woman hit her with the cricket bat and she blacked out as the back of her head hit the railing.

* * *

"White male, mid-twenties and white female, early twenties, breaking and entering," a voice was saying as Riley came to. "Send me some back-up, I've got them restrained."

There was a groan and Riley felt a tug on her wrist.

"Oi, you!" the voice snapped. "Sit still."

"Cricket bat," said another voice. "I'm getting cricket bat."

"You were breaking an entering."

Riley hissed as she was suddenly jerked sideways and raised a hand to a spot on her head that was throbbing with pain. Through slits in her eyes, she could just make out the Doctor, no longer straining against the handcuffs that kept them attached to a radiator but hovering over her a bit anxiously, and Amelia Pond, all grown up and pretending to be a policewoman.

"You hurt her," the Doctor said accusingly, briefly shooting Amy a look with narrowed eyes before returning his attention to the brunette, trying to pull her hand away from her head.

"And you were breaking and entering!" Amy repeated angrily, hands on her hips.

There was a sudden warmth where Riley had been hit and she pulled away from the Doctor in alarm, no longer believing that she was dreaming and realizing distantly that he must have wasted a bit of his regeneration energy to heal her. His hand had been glowing.

"There," the Doctor said. "Better?"

Riley just stared back at him fearfully, which made him frown, but Amy spoke up before he had a chance to say anything else.

"Do you want to shut up now?" she said. "I've got back-up on the way!"

It took a moment for the Doctor to look away from Riley, then he frowned again as he noticed Amy's outfit. "Hang on, no, wait – you're a policewoman."

"And you're breaking and entering," Amy said again. "You see how this works?"

"But what are you doing here?" the Doctor asked. "Where's Amelia?"

"Amelia Pond?" Amy said. An odd look crossed her face as she stared down at the Time Lord, but then Riley blinked and it was gone.

The Doctor nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "Little Scottish girl. Where is she? I promised her five minutes but the engines were phasing. I suppose we must have gone a bit far. Has something happened to her?"

"Amelia Pond hasn't lived here in a long time," Amy told him.

The Doctor's expression was full of dread. "How long?"

". . . Six months," Amy lied.

"No, no, no!" the Doctor cried, hitting the floor. "We can't be six months late! I said five minutes! I _promised_!"

He sniffed, clearly upset, while Amy turned away.

"What happened to her?" the Doctor asked after a moment. "What happened to Amelia Pond?"

Amy ignored him, speaking into her pretend radio.

"Sarge, it's me again," she said. "Hurry it up, this guy knows something about Amelia Pond."

The Doctor cast a glance at the extra door at the end of the hall, then turned to Riley. "Do _you_ know what happened to her?"

Riley just stared at him in growing horror, unable to believe she wasn't dreaming.

"What is it?" the Doctor asked, sounding a bit anxious now. "What's wrong? I thought I healed you -" He raised a hand to check, but Riley leaned as far away from him as possible.

"You just . . . stay away from me!" she said.

Amy glared at them over her shoulder.

"Quiet!" she snapped.

The Doctor's hand froze mid-air, an expression on his face like a kicked puppy, but Riley couldn't bring herself to care, too caught up in her own issues.

 _Maybe I've finally lost it,_ she thought. _I always knew my family would drive me insane._ Her older brother had actually made it his life's mission to do just that, doing his best to confuse her at every opportunity and try to convince her that certain things happened differently to what she remembered. She hated him and hadn't even seen him in years, however, so it must have been someone else who made her snap, likely her mother, who favored Riley's brother for reasons she would never be able to understand and who could be just as bad as he was some days.

Riley had left America to get away from that, but clearly she hadn't left soon enough. Possibly she hadn't left at all and had been locked up somewhere for her own protection.

Not that she wanted to believe that, of course, but what other explanation could there be?

She could think of none.

"Oh!" the Doctor said suddenly. He was still looking at her, but a look of something like dread had replaced the wounded look and he whacked himself on the head. "Of course! Stupid, _stupid_ Doctor! Riley!" He grabbed her hands before she could pull them away. "Aurelia! You need to listen to me. I know you're scared – believe me, I know – but this is very important -"

He was broken off by Amy, who marched over to them with her hands on her hips.

"What part of 'do you want to shut up now' don't you understand?" she demanded.

The Doctor tried to keep talking, but Amy wasn't having it, so eventually he groaned, frustrated, and apparently decided the only thing for it was to get back to why they were there in the first place, his eyes briefly flickering to the extra door before he looked up at the irate ginger.

"I need to speak to whoever lives in this house now!" he demanded.

" _I_ live here," Amy informed him.

"But you're the police!" the Doctor protested.

"Yes, and this is where I live," Amy said testily. "You got a problem with that?!"

"How many rooms?" the Doctor asked.

Amy was a bit thrown by the unexpected question. "I'm sorry, what?"

"On the floor," the Doctor clarified. "How many rooms on this floor. Count them for me now."

"Why?" Amy demanded.

The Doctor looked back at her without a shred of doubt. "Because it will change your life."

Amy huffed, but decided to humor him, pointing at each of the rooms as she counted.

"Five," she said. "One, two, three, four, five -"

The Doctor caught the hesitation.

"Six," he finished, still looking at her.

"Six?" Amy tried to scoff, but Riley could see a hint of fear in her eyes and so could the Doctor.

"Look," he said, nodding at the extra door.

"Look where?" Amy asked.

"Exactly where you don't want to look," the Doctor told her. "Where you never want to look – the corner of your eye. Look behind you."

For a moment, Riley didn't think she would listen, but then Amy began to turn, slowly, and when she saw the extra door at the end of the hall for the first time, she sucked in a breath.

"That's . . . That is not possible," she said, speaking more to herself than to the two people she had cuffed to the radiator. "How's that possible?"

"There's a perception filter round the door," the Doctor informed her. "Sensed it the last time we were here. Should've seen it. Riley did."

Riley looked at him then, caught his eye, and quickly looked away again.

"But that's a whole room," Amy protested. "That's a whole room I've never even noticed."

"The filter stops you," the Doctor explained, the wounded look back on his face. "Something came a while ago to hide. It's still hiding. You need to uncuff us now!"

Amy had started walking towards the door.

"I don't have the key," she said quietly. "I lost it."

"How can you have lost it!?"

That was when the Doctor realized what she was doing.

"Stay away from that door!" he warned.

Naturally, Amy didn't listen.

"Do not touch that door!"

Amy reached for the doorknob.

"Listen to me! Do not open that -"

But Amy continued to ignore him, opening the door and cautiously stepping inside.

"Why does no one ever listen to me?" the Doctor demanded. "Do I just have a face that nobody listens to . . . again." He glanced at Riley again and began to search his pockets. "My screwdriver, where is it? Silver thing, blue at the end. Where did it go?"

"There's nothing here!" Amy called.

"Whatever's there stopped you seeing the whole room," the Doctor told her. "What makes you think you could see it? Now, please, just get out!"

"Silver, blue at the end?" Amy checked.

The Doctor nodded. "My screwdriver, yeah."

"It's here," Amy said.

"Must have rolled under the door," the Doctor suggested.

"Yeah," Amy agreed, although she sounded a bit off and even if Riley hadn't already known everything that was about to happen – well, more or less – she would have suspected the younger woman was lying. "Must have. . . and then it must have jumped onto the table . . ."

"Get out of there!" the Doctor shouted in alarm. "Get out of there! Get out! Get out of there!" He strained against the cuffs as much as he dared with Riley still attached in a vain attempt to run and protect the woman who had been a little girl five minutes ago. When Amy didn't immediately run out of the room, he paused. "What is it? What are you doing?"

"There's nothing here," Amy said, "but . . ."

"Corner of your eye," the Doctor reminded her.

"What is it?" Riley could picture Amy, her image flickering between the actress who had portrayed her in the show and the real thing, looking around, a creature that looked almost like an eel but with long, sharp teeth and oozing slime dangling from the ceiling and following her movements from behind. She bit her lip, upset by what was happening, not because Amy was in danger – she knew Amy would be fine – but because she didn't want any of it to be real.

Why would she? Anyone else might have been excited at the prospect of an adventure with the Doctor, but sooner or later it would have occurred to them to wonder when it would end, if it ever would, if they could ever go back home. Even without that, adventure in the Doctor's world was practically synonymous with danger. He was always running into Daleks, Cybermen, and the Weeping Angels, and Riley was with Amy and the eleventh Doctor, so he had yet to meet the Silence or the Great Intelligence and the Whisper Men.

And the Doctor seemed to already know Riley, which suggested she ended up in his past at some point, so if she stayed, who knew what other dangers she would face.

"Don't try to see it," the Doctor warned, oblivious to Riley's inner turmoil as he tried to talk sense into Amy. "If it knows you've seen it, it will kill you. Don't look at it. _Do not look_."

A moment later, Amy, who had continued not listening to the Time Lord, screamed.

"Get out!" the Doctor shouted again.

This time Amy did listen and came running back down the hall towards Riley and the Doctor, carrying the sonic screwdriver, which was now covered in slime. The Doctor snatched it away from her, used it to lock the door and then tried to use it to unlock the handcuffs, but this time it didn't work, the light on the end blinking on and off a few times before it stopped.

"What's the bad alien done to you?" the Doctor asked, trying to clean it with the end of his shirt.

"Will that door hold it?" Amy asked, glancing fearfully back at the door.

"Oh, yeah, yeah, course!" the Doctor said, sarcasm dripping from his every word. "It's an inter-dimensional multi-form from outer-space – they're all terrified of wood!"

Amy shot him a look, but didn't comment. At the same time, a bright light shone around the door as Prisoner Zero changed its form.

"What's that? What's it doing?"

"I don't know," the Doctor said distractedly, still trying to clean the screwdriver. "Getting dressed? Run. Just go. Your back-up's coming, we'll be fine."

Although she wanted a bit more time to compose herself – or, well, a lot more time – Riley didn't particularly want to stick around in a house with Prisoner Zero on the loose – delusion, dream, or otherwise – and didn't really trust the screwdriver to work, no matter that she knew it had in the show, and had reluctantly snatched her coat, which Amy had taken as a precaution, off the railing nearby. In the middle of searching pockets for something she could use to pick the lock on the cuffs – all she had found so far was a pack of gum and a few coins, but she was sure she had a pin or something – she paused to glance at the Time Lord.

"There is no back-up," she said.

The Doctor look back at her in surprise with a hint of disbelief, surprise that she was talking again and disbelief at what she had said. "I heard her on the radio," he said. "She called for back-up."

"I was pretending," Amy cut in. "It's a pretend radio."

The Doctor gave her a look similar to the one he had given Riley, although this time there was more disbelief than surprise. "You're a policewoman."

"I'm a _kiss-o-gram_!" Amy took off her hat then and tossed it aside, allowing her hair to fall down around her shoulders.

"Well, actually," Riley amended, a bit belated, as she paused again, "there _is_ back-up."

The other two looked at her in surprise. Just then, the door at the end of the hall was knocked off its hinges and fell into the hallway, revealing what looked like a balding old man in blue overalls and a rottweiler attached to a leash standing inside the room.

"But it's just -" Amy started to protest, but the Doctor cut her off.

"No, it isn't," he said. "Look at the faces."

The man was snarling like a dog while the dog remained oddly impassive.

"What?" Amy turned to shoot the Doctor a look of disbelief. "I'm sorry, but what?"

"It's all one creature," the Doctor explained. "One creature disguised as two. Clever old multi-form. A bit of a rush job, though," he added loudly, drawing Prisoner Zero's attention to him as it stepped out into the hall. "Got the voice a bit muddled, did you? Mind you, where did you get the pattern from? You'd need a psychic link, a live feed. How did you fix that?"

"There's a bunch of people in a coma," Riley informed him distractedly, having finally found a pin and working on picking the lock on the cuffs.

The Doctor nodded slowly, while Prisoner Zero snarled, and when the multi-form started to advance, he threw out a hand. "Stay, boy! These two and me -" He patted the floor on either side of him. "- we're safe. Want to know why?" He jerked his head at Amy. "She sent for back-up."

"I didn't send for back-up!" Amy hissed.

"Okay, maybe not," the Doctor agreed, "but Riley says there's back-up and I trust her."

Riley fumbled and nearly dropped the pin, but quickly got back to work and refused to look at him.

"So, yeah, we have back-up," the Doctor informed Prisoner Zero.

Almost as if on cue, a robotic voice echoed through the house: _"Attention, Prisoner Zero. The human residence is surrounded. Attention, Prisoner Zero. The human residence is surrounded."_

"What's that?" Amy asked.

"That would be the back-up," the Doctor informed her. "Okay, one more time: We do have back-up and that's definitely why we're safe."

 _"Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated."_

"Well, safe apart from, you know, incineration," the Doctor amended with a wince. "Okay, Riley," he added, sounding a bit strained, as Prisoner Zero went into another room to have a look outside. "Any second now."

Riley had half a mind to snap at him, but just then, there was a _click_ and they were free.

"Run," the Doctor said as he jumped to his feet and pulled Riley up beside him. He pushed her, then Amy, in front of him. "Run!"

They ran.

As soon as they were outside, the Doctor turned to lock the door with the screwdriver, whacking it a few times to get it to work, then rounded on Amy. "Kiss-o-gram?"

"Yes!" she said defensively.

"Why'd you pretend to be a policewoman?" the Doctor asked, snatching Riley's hand as he marched back where they had left the TARDIS and tugging her along.

"You broke into my house!" Amy defended. "It was this or a French maid!" She ran after them. "What's going on? Tell me! Tell me!"

The Doctor paused when they reached the blue box, dropping Riley's hand, and turned to face her. "An alien convict is hiding in your spare room disguised as a man and a dog," he explained impatiently, "and some other aliens are about to incinerate your house. Any questions?"

"Yes!"

"Me, too." The Doctor turned back around and tried to open the door with a tiny silver key, but the TARDIS was still mending itself. "No, no, don't _do_ that, not _now_! It's still rebuilding, not letting us in!"

 _"Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated."_

Prisoner Zero, who was watching the trio from the upstairs window, barked at them. Amy grabbed Riley and the Doctor each by their wrist and started dragging them off. "Come on!"

The Doctor resisted, digging his heels into the ground, and tugged himself away.

"No, wait, hang on, wait, wait, wait," he said. "The shed." He ran over to the new – well, new to him – shed. "I destroyed that thing last time I was here, smashed it to pieces."

"So there's a new one," Amy said, still holding onto Riley, and reached for the Doctor again. "Let's go."

Again, the Doctor pulled away.

"But the new one's got old," he said. "It's ten years old at least." He sniffed the wood, then ran a finger along the edge of it and tasted it. "Twelve years," he corrected, marching back to Amy. "We're not six months late, we're twelve years late!"

"He's coming," Amy hedged, not wanting to reveal her identity and unaware that Riley already knew.

But the Doctor wasn't listening.

"You said six months," he said. "Why did you say six months?"

"We've got to go," Amy tried.

"This matters," the Doctor insisted. "This is important. Why did you say six months?"

Amy, who had started to walk away, dropped Riley's arm and rounded on the Time Lord, hurt. When she spoke, she dropped her English accent in favor of her natural Scottish one. "Why did you say five minutes!?"

The Doctor reeled. "What?"

Amy grabbed his arm and tried to tug him away. "Come on."

The Doctor didn't budge. _"What?"_

Riley went to grab his other arm and helped Amy pull him along. "Come _on_."

He dug his heels in a bit as they walked, still in shock. _"What!?"_

 _"Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated."_

Prisoner Zero was downstairs now, but by the time he opened the door, the trio were gone.

* * *

A few streets away from Amy's house, the Doctor pulled away from the girls and rounded on Amy. "You're Amelia."

Amy shoved past him as she continued walking. "You're late."

The Doctor took Riley's hand to make sure she didn't lag behind as he ran to catch up with the other girl. "Amelia Pond, you're the little girl."

"I'm Amelia," Amy confirmed snappishly, "and you're late."

"What happened?"

"Twelve years."

"You hit us with a cricket bat!"

"Twelve. Years."

"A cricket bat! You hurt Riley!"

Amy was unapologetic. "Twelve years and four psychiatrists."

The Doctor looked a bit bemused. "Four?"

"I kept biting them," Amy admitted quietly, ducking her head to hide her embarrassment.

The Doctor laughed a bit. "Why?"

Amy seemed even more embarrassed as he looked at her. "They said neither of you were real."

 _"Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated."_

This time the message came from a radio in an ice cream van.

"No, no, no, come on," Amy protested. She looked between Riley and the Doctor. "What? We're being staked out by an ice cream van?"

Riley shook her head. "No."

The Doctor shot her a look of confusion, but decided to investigate, dragging her over to the van. Amy was right behind them.

"What's that?" the Doctor asked the vendor when they arrived. "Why are you playing that?"

"It's supposed to be Claire De Lune," the man said.

The Doctor picked up the radio and listened.

 _"Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated. Repeat, Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated."_

As the message continued to repeat, Riley, who could hear it playing all around them, tapped the Doctor lightly on the shoulder and jerked her head towards the people nearest them who were listening to the message, a jogger who could hear it on her MP3 player and an elderly woman who could hear it on her cell phone.

"Doctor, Riley, what's happening?" Amy asked, also looking at them, but in fear.

The Doctor didn't answer and Riley didn't have the chance as he dragged her over to a random house, jumping over a low white garden fence in the process. Inside, an elderly woman, who Riley recalled was Jeff's grandmother but didn't know the name of, was flipping through the channels on her television, but every single one of them showed the big blue eye as the Atraxi continued to broadcast their message to the entire world.

"Hello!" the Doctor greeted. "Sorry to burst in, we're doing a special on television faults in the area." He glanced at Amy's costume as she came into the house. "Also, crimes. Let's have a look." He dropped Riley's hand as he ran over to the old woman and snatched the remote from her.

"I was just about to phone," the woman informed him. "It's on every channel." She spotted the two girls. "Hello, Amy, dear." She eyed Amy's uniform. "Are you a policewoman now?"

"Well, sometimes," Amy hedged.

Jeff's grandmother blinked. "I thought you were a nurse."

"I can be a nurse," Amy told her, starting to squirm.

"Or, actually, a nun."

Amy was definitely uncomfortable now, but forced a laugh. "I dabble!"

Fortunately for Amy, Jeff's grandmother seemed to accept this and turned her attention instead to Riley, who was still trying to wrap her mind around the possibility that she might not be dreaming or deluded, and the Doctor, who was now sitting on the sofa as he tried to work out exactly what the message meant. "Amy, who are your friends?"

"Who's Amy?" the Doctor asked, glancing over at them. "You were Amelia."

Amy shrugged. "Yeah, now I'm Amy."

"Amelia Pond – that was a great name," the Doctor said, apparently not understanding why she would have wanted to change her name.

Amy gave him a small, sad smile. "Bit fairy tale."

"I know you two, don't I?" Jeff's grandmother cut in, looking between Amy's 'imaginary' friends. "I've seen you both somewhere before."

"Not me," the Doctor said. "Brand-new face." He made a face for emphasis. "First time on. Not Riley either. She's only been here five minutes." He sounded a bit sulky, but when he looked at her, Riley became very interested in her boots, then he sighed and looked at Amy. "And what sort of job's a kiss-o-gram?"

"I go to parties and I kiss people," she explained. She cleared her throat, clearly uncomfortable talking about this with Jeff's grandmother in the room, but pressed on. "With outfits." When the Doctor shot her a look of disapproval, she got defensive again. "It's a laugh!"

 _"You were a little girl five minutes ago!"_ the Doctor scolded.

Amy frowned. "You're worse than my aunt!"

"I'm the Doctor, I'm worse than everybody's aunt!" The Doctor jumped to his feet and, realizing how that sounded, turned to the old woman, pointing a finger at her. "And that is not how I'm introducing myself."

Jeff's grandmother just stared at him, not really understanding anything that was going on, and the Doctor turned away from her, snatching a radio off a table and listening to the message playing in different languages, French and German, before shutting it off.

"Okay, so it's everywhere," he said, half to himself, "in every language. They're broadcasting to the whole world."

"What's up there?" Amy asked when he poked his head out a window and looked up at the sky. "What are you looking for?"

The Doctor pulled his head back in, ignoring her as he started talking. "Okay, planet this size, two poles, your basic molten core . . . They're going to need a forty percent fission blast."

Here, a tall, young man, so tall his head almost touched the ceiling, came into the house and the Doctor, still talking, walked over to him and stretched up and down on the tips of his toes as he seemed to compare their heights, making the younger man stare.

"But they'll have to power up first," the Doctor was saying, "won't they? So assuming a medium-sized starship, that's twenty minutes. What do you think – twenty minutes?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Yeah, twenty minutes. We've got twenty minutes."

"Twenty minutes to what?" Amy asked as he stopped comparing heights and turned to look at everyone else.

"Twenty minutes to the end of the world," Riley said quietly, making the ginger look at her in alarm while the newcomer, who could only be Jeff, stared intently at the Doctor.

"Are you the Doctor?" he asked.

"He is, isn't he?" Jeff's grandmother said, seeming delighted as she looked between Amy's not-so-imaginary friends again. "He's the Doctor. And this must be Riley! The Raggedy Doctor and the Girl From the Wall! All those cartoons you did when you were little," she added to Amy. "The Raggedy Doctor and the Girl From the Wall, it's them!"

Riley made a face, not sure how she felt about the name little Amelia had given her – it was worse than the Doctor's.

"Cartoons?" the Doctor asked, shooting Amy another bemused look.

Jeff was grinning at the two of them. "Gran, it's them, isn't it? It's really them!"

"Jeff, shut up!" Amy hissed. She looked at Riley. "What did you mean 'the end of the world'?" she demanded.

The Doctor was the one who answered.

"The human residence," he said. "They're not talking about your house, they're talking about the planet. Somewhere up there, there's a spaceship and it's going to incinerate the planet."

* * *

Oblivious to the impending danger, one little boy was playing with a toy helicopter as he ran down the street Riley, the Doctor, and Amy were walking on after leaving Jeff's house. Riley knew she could probably cut this particular adventure short, tell the Doctor everything he needed to know so he could lure the Atraxi to Prisoner Zero in half the amount of time and give him time to settle into his new regeneration. The problem was that it would also give him more time to talk to Riley and she was really starting to think she wasn't dreaming or deluded – everything, from the Doctor and Amy themselves to the ground beneath her feet, was too realistic to be anything else – but she wasn't ready to admit it. She just wanted to hide away, shut her eyes, and pretend, just for a little while, that she was still back at the hotel, safe in bed.

So she said nothing as the Doctor started talking to Amy.

"What is this place?" he asked. "Where are we?"

"Leadworth," Amy informed him.

"Where's the rest of it?"

"This is it."

"Is there an airport?"

"No."

"A nuclear power station?"

"No."

The Doctor looked at her, a bit desperate. "Even a little one?"

"No."

"Nearest city?"

"Gloucester, half an hour by car."

"We don't have half an hour." The Doctor looked at Amy again. "Do we have a car?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Well, that's good," the Doctor said sarcastically. "Fantastic, that is! Twenty minutes to save the world and I've got a post office. And it's shut! _What_ is that?"

He marched over to a little pond nearby.

"It's a duck pond," Amy informed him.

He looked at her. "Why aren't there any ducks?"

"I don't know. There's never any ducks."

"Then how do you know it's a duck pond?"

Amy shrugged. "It just is. Is it important, the duck pond?"

"More than you might think," Riley grumbled, crossing her arms and turning her head to avoid the looks she got for the comment.

The Doctor fell to the ground a second later, clutching his chest.

"I don't know," he said, sounding strained again. "Why would I know? Riley knows." He grimaced. "I'm not ready, I'm not done yet."

The sky went dark then and they looked up, even Riley.

"What's happening?" Amy asked. "Why's it going dark?"

"It's not dark," Riley said. "It's a force field."

"What's that for?" Amy asked her, glancing up as the sky cleared up, leaving only the sun looking a bit off.

"They've sealed up your upper atmosphere," the Doctor explained, "now they're getting ready to boil the planet." He got to his feet and looked around at all the people who had come out to see what was happening. "Oh, and here they come, the human race. The end comes, as it was always going to – down a video phone!"

Both Riley and Amy were suffering from a sort of existential crisis, as in Riley couldn't believe Amy and the Doctor existed while Amy couldn't believe Riley and the Doctor existed, but somehow Riley thought she would be the first to decide enough was enough and try to duck out. Things were still playing out a lot like the episode, however, and Amy also had the end of the world to deal with, so naturally it was her.

"This isn't real, is it?" she said desperately. "This is some kind of big wind-up."

"Why would we wind you up?" the Doctor asked, confused.

Riley really didn't like how he kept saying 'we' – she wished he would stop.

"You told me you had a time machine," Amy said.

"And you believed me," the Doctor said.

Amy shook her head. "Then I grew up."

The Doctor groaned. "Oh, you never want to do that. No, hang on, shut up, wait! I missed it!" He smacked himself on the forehead. "I saw it and I missed it!"

Riley grabbed him by the shoulders before he could hit himself again and turned him in the direction of a certain blond nurse in scrubs who was taking pictures with his phone, but not pictures of the sky like everyone else. When the Doctor saw the nurse, he turned to kiss Riley on the forehead, making her jerk back in surprise, and turned to Amy.

"Twenty minutes," he said. "We can do it. Twenty minutes, the planet burns. Run to your loved ones and say goodbye, or stay and help us."

It took Amy a moment to decide. When she did, it wasn't the choice the Doctor hoped she would make: "No."

"I'm sorry?" the Doctor said.

"No!" Amy repeated. She grabbed him by the tie and dragged him off.

Riley didn't follow, just listening to the Doctor's protests fade away, then turning away from them, crossing her arms and looking at the ground in front of her. She didn't notice the Doctor keep glancing over at her, looking worried, as she contemplated running off. She was still standing there, debating, when the Doctor came running back to her a minute later.

"What about you?" he said. "Will you stay?"

Riley looked down at her boots again and didn't answer. The Doctor put his hands on her shoulders, making her look at him.

"Please," he said softly. "I know you're scared, but I need you with me."

In the end, Riley was just too scared of what might happen to her if she just decided to stay there or ran off. She gave a reluctant nod.

Amy watched them, confused, as the Doctor sighed in relief.

This time, although he leaned in a bit closer, he refrained from kissing her. "Thank you."

A moment later they were all running towards the nurse. The Doctor reached him first, pulling Riley along, and dropped her hand in favor of snatching away the younger man's phone. Riley glanced briefly at the identification card attached to the scrubs to make sure the nurse was Rory Williams or, as she dubbed him in her mind, the future Mr. Pond and not someone else. Seeing that he was, she moved away from him and waited.

"The sun's going out," the Doctor said as he looked at the last picture Rory had taken, "and you're photographing a man and a dog. Why?"

Rory wasn't listening. "Amy?"

"Hi!" Amy came running up beside him and flashed him a smile, then noticed Riley and the Doctor looking at them. "Oh, this is Rory, he's a . . . friend."

Riley frowned. In later adventures, the Ponds were so in love, she'd forgotten there was a time when at least Amy had questioned her feelings.

"Boyfriend," Rory corrected. His tone of voice suggested he did so often.

"Kind of boyfriend," Amy hedged, glancing at the Doctor.

Rory looked hurt. "Amy!"

The Doctor had no more patience for their 'domestics.' "Man and dog," he repeated. "Why?"

Rory stared. "Oh, my God, it's him." He spotted Riley standing off to the side. "And her!"

"Just answer his question, please," Amy said quietly.

"It's them, though," Rory said. "The Doctor and Riley. The Raggedy Doctor and the Girl From the Wall."

"Yeah, they came back," Amy told him.

"But they were a story," Rory protested. "They were a game."

The Doctor grabbed Rory by the front of his shirt and shook him a little. "Man and dog – why?" he said again. "Tell me now."

Rory shook his head. "Sorry. Because he can't be there. Because he's -"

"In a hospital, in a coma," the Doctor said with him.

Rory nodded. "Yeah."

"Right again, Riley," the Doctor said. "Multi-form, you see?" He released Rory and smoothed down his shirt. "Disguise itself as anything, but it needs a live feed, a psychic link with a living but dormant -" He poked Rory in the forehead. "- mind."

Behind them, Prisoner Zero, still disguised as a man and a dog, snarled at them.

The Doctor turned around and calmly stepped forward. "Prisoner Zero."

Rory stared at his girlfriend in disbelief. "What, there's a Prisoner Zero, too?"

"Yes," Amy said.

One of the Atraxi ships came flying overhead then, its eye swiveling back and forth as it scanned the area. The Doctor held up his sonic screwdriver.

"See, that ship up there is scanning this area for non-terrestrial technology," he explained. "And nothing says non-terrestrial like a sonic screwdriver."

He held the device high above his head and switched it on. There was instant chaos as streetlights shattered, car alarms blared, sirens wailed, and everyone began shouting in panic. A firetruck even came rolling down the street, chased by a small group of firemen.

"I think someone's going to notice," the Doctor said, "don't you?"

Prisoner Zero barked at them. The Doctor lowered the screwdriver, aiming it at a phone box and making it explode. A moment later he dropped it as it sparked and fizzled.

"No, no, no, don't do that!" the Doctor said.

The ship was flying away.

"Look, it's going," Rory said.

The Doctor looked up, waving his arms to try and catch its attention.

"No, come back, he's here!" he shouted. "Come back! He's here! Prisoner Zero is here! Come back, he's here! Prisoner Zero is -"

"Gone," Riley remarked, watching the man and dog turn to green mist and fall down the drain Prisoner Zero had been standing on.

"The drain," Amy said. "It just sort of melted and went down the drain."

"Well, of course it did!" the Doctor said, throwing his hands into the air in exasperation.

"What do we do now?" Amy asked.

"It's hiding in human form," the Doctor told her. "We need to drive it into the open. No TARDIS, no screwdriver, young Riley -" Here, Riley gave him a look, but said nothing. "- seventeen minutes. Come on, think. Think!"

Riley sighed. "Calm down. You need Rory's phone and Jeff's laptop."

"My phone?" Rory said, looking at her in surprise.

"Give me," the Doctor said, not questioning Riley and holding out a hand expectantly.

Rory didn't listen.

"I don't understand," he said to Amy. "How can they be real? They were never real."

"Phone, now, give me!" the Doctor insisted.

Rory kept talking as he handed over the phone. "They were just a game. We were kids. You dressed up as her and you made me dress up as him!"

Amy ignored him, moving to talk to Riley. "So that thing, _that_ hid in my house for twelve years?"

"Multi-forms can live a millennia," she explained. "I think."

"She's right," the Doctor said, scrolling through all the photos Rory had taken of the coma patients. "Twelve years is a pit stop."

"So how come you show up again on the same day that lot do?" Amy pressed on, a little suspicious. "The same minute?"

"They're looking for him, but followed me," the Doctor explained. "They saw me through the crack, got a fix. They're only late cos I am." He looked at Rory. "These are all coma patients?"

Rory nodded. "Yeah."

"No, they're all the multi-form," the Doctor corrected. "Eight comas, eight disguises for Prisoner Zero."

"He had a dog, though," Amy cut in. "There's a dog in a coma?"

"The man in a coma was dreaming about a dog," Riley explained.

"So Prisoner Zero gets a dog," the Doctor finished. "Laptop! Your friend – what did you say his name was?" He looked at Riley.

"Jeff," she said.

"Yeah, him," the Doctor said. "He had a laptop in his bag – a laptop. Big bag, big laptop. I need Jeff's laptop. You two." He put his hands on Amy and Rory's shoulders. "Get to the hospital, get everyone out, clear the whole floor. Phone us when you're done. Riley, with me!"

Riley had no choice but to follow as he pulled her along. He didn't let her go until they were back at Jeff's house and didn't bother to knock, just burst in and ran around until he found Jeff's bedroom. By the time Riley caught up with him, he had managed to wrestle the laptop away from Jeff and shot the younger man an incredulous look.

"Get a girlfriend, Jeff," he said.

Already embarrassed, Jeff remained silent and ducked his head, cheeks reddening, when he noticed Riley standing by the door. When his grandmother came into the room and stood next to Riley, he looked like he wanted to fall through the mattress and melt through the floor.

"What are you doing?" the woman asked.

"The sun's gone wibbly," the Doctor explained, typing away, "so right now, somewhere out there, there's going to be a big video conference call. All the experts in the world panicking at once, and do you know what they need? Me. Ah, and here they all are. All the big boys. NASA, Jodrell Bank, Tokyo Space Center, Patrick Moore."

"Ooh, I like Patrick Moore," Jeff's grandmother said excitedly.

"I'll get you his number," the Doctor told her, "but watch him, he's a devil."

"You can't just hack in on a call like that!" Jeff protested.

"Yeah, he can," Riley cut in. "In fact, he just did."

The Doctor held up the wallet containing his psychic paper, which looked like ordinary, blank paper to Riley.

"Who are you?" one of the experts said. "This is a secure call. What are you doing?"

"Hello," the Doctor said. "I know, you should switch me off. But before you do, watch this." He started typing again.

"It's here too," another expert said. "I'm getting it."

"Fermat's Theorem," the Doctor explained, "the proof, and I mean the real one, never seen before. Poor old Fermat, got killed in a duel before he could write it down. My fault, I slept in. Oh, and here's an oldie but a goodie – why electrons have mass. And a personal favorite of mine, faster-than-light travel with two diagrams and a joke. Look at your screens. Whoever I am, I'm a genius. Look at the sun. You need all the help you can get. Fellas, pay attention."

The Doctor took out Rory's phone and set to work. Riley leaned back against the wall as she waited for him to finish up, not entirely sure why he'd brought her along. Was he afraid she would run if she went with Amy and Rory? Did he just want her there?

She wasn't sure she wanted to know.

"Sir, what are you doing?" one of the experts asked.

"I'm writing a computer virus," the Doctor told him. "Very clever, super-fast, and a tiny bit alive, but don't let on. Why am I writing it on a phone? Never mind, you'll find out. Okay, I'm sending this to all your computers. Get everyone who works for you sending this everywhere. E-mail, text, Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, radar dish – whatever you've got. Any questions?"

"Who were your lady friends?" another expert asked.

"Patrick, behave," the Doctor scolded, glaring at the screen.

"What does this virus do?" asked yet another expert.

"It's a reset command, that's all," the Doctor said. "It resets counters. It gets in the WiFi and resets every counter it can find. Clocks, calendars – anything with a chip will default at zero at exactly the same time. But, yeah, I could be lying, why should you trust me? I'll let my best man explain."

Silence.

"Jeff," Riley hissed. "You're his best man."

Jeff looked at her in alarm. "His what?"

The Doctor closed the laptop enough that the experts wouldn't be able to see them and turned to face the younger man. "Listen to me," he said. "In ten minutes, you're going to be a legend. In ten minutes, everyone on that screen is going to be offering you any job you want. But first, you have to be magnificent. You have to make them trust you and get them working. This is it, Jeff. Right here, right now. This is when you fly. Today's the day you save the world."

 _No pressure,_ Riley wanted to say, but thought better of it.

"Why me?" Jeff asked.

"It's your bedroom," the Doctor told him. "Now go, go, go."

"Don't forget to delete your internet history!" Riley called as the Doctor dragged her off.

* * *

The Doctor had found the firetruck parked not far from Jeff's house. They got in and he just started to drive when he looked at Riley. "So do you believe now?"

She frowned. "Believe what?"

"That you're not dreaming," the Doctor said. "That this is real."

Riley said nothing. The Doctor, on the other hand, had no intention of letting the matter rest and continued talking. Or he would have, if Rory's phone didn't ring. He groaned at the interruption, but tossed the phone to Riley.

"Yeah?" she said.

"Riley?" Amy said. "We're at the hospital, but we can't get through."

"Uniform," Riley reminded her.

"Oh!"

"What did she say?" Rory asked.

"Ha ha! 'Uniform,'" Amy told him. "Are you and the Doctor on your way? You're going to need a car."

"Who needs a car when people leave firetrucks sitting around and forget to remove the keys?" Riley said.

"What, seriously?" Amy asked.

As if on cue, the Doctor chose that moment to turn on the siren.

"Seriously," Riley confirmed. "Anyway, watch out for Prisoner Zero. He should be there soon, if he isn't already."

"Will do," Amy promised, while the Doctor began to drive faster.

They hung up.

"Prisoner Zero is there?" the Doctor asked.

"Or he will be soon," Riley said. "I can't remember. I get that you know me, even though I've already just met you, but why does it not surprise you that I know that?"

She had to ask.

"When I first met you, you told me that you came from a universe where I'm a character on a television show," the Doctor said.

Riley frowned. "When did you first meet me?"

"Spoilers."

Riley's frown deepened. "I don't like this."

The Doctor's response was again cut off by the phone.

"Is it Prisoner Zero?" Riley asked when she picked up.

"Yes," Amy confirmed.

"You might want to drive a bit faster," Riley commented.

The Doctor did just that.

"Amy, you need to get out of there!" he called.

"He was so angry," a voice was saying. It sounded like it belonged to a little girl, but Riley knew it was Prisoner Zero in disguise. "He kept shouting. And that dog, the size of that dog, I swear it was rabid. And he just went mad, attacking everyone. Where did he go, did you see? Has he gone? We hid in the ladies." The voice changed then, becoming that of a woman's. "Oh, I'm getting it wrong again, aren't I? I'm always doing that. So many mouths."

"That's Prisoner Zero," Riley said. "Run. As soon as you get into a room," she added when she noticed they were almost at the hospital, "the Doctor will need to know what window you're at."

There was a screeching noise and the sound of running feet as Prisoner Zero chased after Amy and Rory.

"We're in the coma ward," Amy said finally. "Uh . . . first floor on the left, fourth window from the end."

Riley repeated what she said to the Doctor.

"Tell them to duck," he said as he drove through the gates.

"Duck!" Riley said as the Doctor raised the ladder. A moment later she was thrown against her seat belt as the firetruck swerved to a stop.

"Come on!" the Doctor called as he got out and started to climb. "I need that phone."

Riley hung up and went after him.

"Right!" she heard the Doctor say. "Hello! Are we late?" When Riley appeared at the top of the ladder, he held out a hand to help her down, then looked at the clock on the wall behind Prisoner Zero, who was now disguised as a woman and two little girls that must have been the woman's daughters. "No, three minutes to go. So still time."

"Time for what, Time Lord?" Prisoner Zero asked, using the woman and the woman's voice to speak.

"Take the disguise off," the Doctor said. "They'll find you in a heartbeat. Nobody dies."

"That's what he wants," Riley told him.

Prisoner Zero was quick to confirm this. "If I am to die, let there be fire."

"Okay," the Doctor said, determined to find a solution that wouldn't end in the destruction of Earth. "You came to this world by opening a crack in space and time. Do it again – just leave."

"Prisoner Zero didn't open the crack," Riley said.

The Doctor frowned at her. "Somebody did. Someone brought you here, too."

Riley shook her head, but before she had a chance to say anything, Prisoner Zero spoke up, still using the woman and her voice.

"The cracks in the skin of the universe – don't you know where they came from?" The woman's mouth quirked into a smile when the Doctor said nothing. "You don't, do you?" Still using the woman, Prisoner Zero used a voice belonging to one of the little girls. "The Doctor in the TARDIS doesn't know." The multi-form taunted him. "Doesn't know, doesn't know!" It switched back to the woman's voice and glanced at Riley. "She does, though. The universe is cracked. The Pandorica will open. Silence will fall."

There was a clicking sound and Riley looked at the clock, seeing all zeros in place of the time.

"And we're off!" the Doctor cheered. "Look at that." He pointed at the clock. "Look at that! Yeah, I know," he added when Prisoner Zero shot him an unimpressed look, "just a clock, whatever. But do you know what's happening right now? In one little bedroom, my team are working. Jeff and the world. And do you know what they're doing? They're spreading the word all over the world, quantum fast. The word is out. And do you know what the word is? The word is zero. Now, me, if I was up in the sky in a battleship, monitoring all Earth communications, I'd take that as a hint. And if I had a whole battle fleet surrounding the planet, I'd be able to track a simple old computer virus to its source in, what, under a minute?"

He looked at Riley and, taking that as her cue, she held up Rory's phone.

"The source, by the way, is right there," the Doctor said, looking a bit smug as he smile, and a bright light shone through the windows. "Oh! And I think they just found us."

Prisoner Zero was unphased.

"The Atraxi are limited," the multi-form informed the Doctor. "While I'm in this form, they'll still be unable to detect me. They've tracked a phone, not me."

"Yeah, but this is the good bit," the Doctor said, grinning. "I mean, this is my favorite bit. Do you know what that phone is full of? Pictures of you. Every form you've learned to take, right here. Oh, and being uploaded about now. And the final score is – no TARDIS, no screwdriver, young Riley – two minutes to spare." He held out his arms in triumph. "Who da man?"

Even Prisoner Zero gave him a look for that.

"Oh, I'm never saying that again!" he grumbled. "Fine."

"Then I shall take a new form," Prisoner Zero declared.

"Oh, stop it, you know you can't," the Doctor waved her off. "Takes months to form that kind of psychic link."

"Or twelve years," Riley said as Prisoner Zero began to glow, making the Doctor look at her in alarm, and a second later Amy collapsed behind her.

The Doctor ran to her. "No! Amy?"

Riley was now looking at replicas of herself and the Doctor, their left and right hands hidden behind them as they shielded a replica of little Amelia from view.

"You've got to hold on," the Doctor was saying, not noticing the change. "Amy! Don't sleep! You've got to stay awake, _please_."

"Doctor?" Rory said.

The Doctor got to his feet and turned to face Prisoner Zero.

"Well, that's rubbish," he said. "Not Riley, the other one. Who's that supposed to be?"

"That's you," Riley informed him.

"Me?" the Doctor said incredulously. "Is that what I look like?"

"You don't know?" Rory said in surprise.

"Busy day," the Doctor dismissed. "Why us, though? You're linked with her. Why are you copying us?"

"Not really us," Riley corrected.

The replica of her and the replica of the Doctor parted to reveal the replica of little Amelia, who stared impassively at the real Doctor.

"Poor Amy Pond," the multi-form said in Amelia's voice. "Still such a child inside. Dreaming of the magic Doctor and the Girl From the Wall she knows will return to save her." She sneered at them both. "What disappointments you've been."

"No, she's dreaming about us cos she can hear us," the Doctor realized. He ran back to Amy and put his hands on either side of her face. "Amy, don't just hear me – listen. Remember the room, the room in your house you couldn't see? Remember you went inside. I tried to stop you, but you did. You went into the room. You went inside. Amy . . . dream about what you saw."

It took Prisoner Zero a moment to realize what the Doctor was trying to get Amy to do.

"No . . . no . . . no!" the multi-form shouted, but it was too late. It's bodies began to glow.

In that same moment, Riley had the wind knocked out of her when an orb of golden light appeared out of nowhere and struck her in the chest. Distantly, she noticed that she was now seeing Prisoner Zero's true form, the slimy eel-like creature, which hissed and writhed as it was enveloped in a bright light.

"No!" the Doctor cried. "Not now!"

 _"Prisoner Zero is located. Prisoner Zero is restrained."_

The world around Riley began to fade away, although before it disappeared completely, Rory's phone slipped from her fingers and she heard Prisoner Zero's last words before it was transported to the Atraxi ships: "Silence, Doctor. Silence will fall!"

* * *

A/N: I think I use names a bit too much. Do I? Anyway, there you have it, the first chapter. I'm hoping the Doctor seems a bit off - just a bit, you know, since he's still settling into his regeneration - but I'm not sure how well I managed to show that. As for Riley, she's sort of all over the place since she's trying to come to terms with everything and I don't anticipate things will get much better for her in the next chapter. I contemplated giving her some time to get comfortable before I sent her away, maybe keep her around until _Victory of the Daleks_ , or at least to the end of this first 'episode,' but I decided against it. The reason for her jumps will be explained fairly on, I'm thinking - I have basic outlines for certain chapters, but for the most part I'm writing this as I go, so I could always change my mind - and I hope it makes sense, although you'll have to wait to find out what brought her to the Doctor's universe and why.


End file.
